


RUNES

by fowo



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Drabbles, Ficlet, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Tags to be added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-05-18 12:52:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14853119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fowo/pseuds/fowo
Summary: Carved into bleached bone, held by rusted metal, each rune had a name that is now lost to time. These are their stories.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Wardruna's album [Yggdrasil](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLepqxMRu1U) is very much suggested as an accompanying soundtrack.

 

> ᚠ
> 
> fé: _wealth_

  

It was never about the coin. Never had been.

 They say coin didn't buy happiness. That may very well be, Daud thought, testing the density of the metal with his teeth, satisfied when it gave way under the pressure. 

 But he found that a healthy amount of coin always came a long way.

 He didn't feel bad about taking away human lives, never had been. But if people sought out his services, conscience-free and motivated by greed or anger or lust or all of them, why not take something from them in return?

 He was impervious to luxuries. He took good care of his few belongings; only enough to fit into his wooden trunk and ready to go where he needed to go. 

 He said good-bye to none. He had stashed away several dead drops throughout the city. Just enough coin to disappear, to get him past the quarantine lines and out of the city. The country.

 The last place was a weeper-filled house by the shores of the Wrenhaven. It had been empty when Daud had come to hide away a satchel of coin. Now, finding the spot under the bushes in the back yard where he needed to dig was harder than expected. Clean hands was much work.

 His money was where he left it. He counted it carefully, and every coin was accounted for. 

  _But where will you go?_ asked a voice, and though it was only in his head, it sounded too much like His voice. But Daud didn't hear Him anymore. He was gone from his life, now. He had bid him farewell, and that was more than Daud could have ever asked for. 

 To part in—peace? To know that, even though Daud had outlived his usefulness, he was not cast away, discarded like a child's toy. That maybe, one day, there might even be—a reunion.

 But not in this wretched city. Not where the fallout of what he had done followed him every step, around every corner. 

 He had made a promise to the Royal Protector, and Daud was a man of his word. 

 He would be gone, and nobody would miss him.

 It was just as well.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> spoilers for the end of DotO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't mean to post music to every damn chapter but my heart hurts so much. So [here you go](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4By4LsruM-I).

 

 

> ᚬ

> ás, óss: one of the æsir

 

 

The first— _the last_  he hears is a name, and then everything— _changes_ —into shapes—colors—sensations.

 Someone—the girl, the _woman_ —he knows her—she catches him as he stumbles—boneless—from his hold in the Void, and he collapses into her arms.

 She is strong, carrying his weight, as she carefully lowers him to the ground. She is talking—to him?—and he hears the words, but they hold no meaning—all his senses focus on is an overwhelming pull between his ribs, and it tears at his voice and at the end of his eyes, chokes his voice and fills his vision with water.

 When he looks up, he sees her face over him. She lacks one eye—distantly, he knows it was because of him—but already the knowledge, the memory—it all fades away.

 She keeps him upright, smoothing wet hair from his forehead—her touch is warm—a heavy sigh tumbles from his lips as he succumbs to the pain—it drips from his lashes and rolls over his lips—he can taste his sadness, salty like the sea.

 "Oh," the boy says. He curls his fingers, stiff from coldness, gnarly from misuse, into the jacket he's wearing—has been wearing, since the day his throat was cut. It is stainless, now, not a drop of blood to be seen. As if all has been—remade. "It hurts."

 "Your chest?" she asks. She moves to check, but he draws himself into a ball, knees and hands bunched up over the middle of his—body.

 "No," he whispers. "My—heart."

 She doesn't reply, only watches as tears continue to fall, and he weeps quietly at first, then louder, deeper, until he cries.

 "He's gone," the boy sobbed.  "I wanted to love him. But I couldn't—I _could not_. And now I'm here, and I want to love him—and he's gone."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ; __;
> 
> this sat in my drafts ever since I _cried through the entire end of DotO_ , but it never had a place. now it does.
> 
> with this, the runes are no longer in proper order. the academic part of me cringes, but the writer part is like HASHTAG YOLO


	3. Chapter 3

> ᚾ

> naudir: _need_

  

He was a human boy, once. He doesn't remember his name or his age, he doesn't remember what breathing was like, how the salt of the sea by the cliffs tasted like. All he remembers is coarse rope binding him, and how hot blood shot from his cut throat. 

"Do you love me?" he asks. 

The Void sucks the color out of everything. Daud's blood red coat is nothing but muted gray. His eyes though, are like steel and undisturbed by even the most ancient magic. 

He casts them down. "I—" he begins to say. 

Oh, how he does. But he can't answer. The Outsider reaches out to caress his cheek. It's there in every breath Daud takes, in every whispered spell, in every sea-gnawed piece of bone that he wears over his heart. 

How Daud loves him. 

"And yet," the Outsider whispers, as though this was a dialogue, something shared and mutual. 

The shadow of doubt clouds Daud's face for a moment. It's an unspoken question, and the Outsider's fingernail catches in his lip. He watches with fascination the dull red he sees when he pulls. Daud has most of his teeth, lost only some to fights and magic, nothing else. Even with the world turning to shit, Daud lives and teaches how to keep all sickness away. 

His teeth are clean. Ground down from chewing, and, certainly, anger, frustration. Daud is an angry man, shrouded in blood and violence. 

"And yet," the Outsider says again. 

He commends that Daud does not flinch when he presses their mouths together; it cannot be a kiss because the Outsider does not remember kindness, does not know affection. What burns inside of him is something he doesn't understand, and he _yearns_ , he yearns to know. 

**Author's Note:**

> to think that so many years after the fact, my Scandinavian Studies would be _useful_ for something.


End file.
